MIAMI LAKES, Fla. – With the current mayor of Miami Lakes term-limited, three candidates are vying for the seat.

All are business owners; two currently serve on the town council, and the third is a political newcomer.

Local 10 News met with all three to get their take on the top issues voters will consider when casting their ballots.

“One of the things I’m most proud of is creating a senior rebate,” Vice Mayor Tony Fernandez, one of the candidates said.

Attorney and council member Josh Dieguez, co-owner of his family’s law firm, said, “I supported a 2-percent reduction in the property tax rate.”

“I’m also a lifelong resident of the town,” Dieguez added.

They are joined by Yuniett Gonzalez, who owns a financial consulting firm.

“Sidewalks and lighting are very poor in our town here today,” Gonzalez noted.

A top issue here continues to be the blasting from nearby rock mining.

Fernandez addressed the issue, “It is an issue that we have been working on for several years. I went to Tallahassee twice this past session to lobby on behalf of our residents. I think one of the things that needs to be explored further is maybe the state working with the miners to come up with ways that are less destructive.”

This local issue is complicated by state control of rock mining operations.

Dieguez explained, “Any claims related to rock blasting have to go through a separate legal process known as the Department of Administrative Hearings, not regular court. So, I am proud to say that one of my proposals from 2018 that I continue to advocate for is to return jurisdiction for those claims back to the regular circuit court.”

“It is a pressing issue here in town,” Gonzalez said, explaining one of the reasons she decided to run for office. “I plan to develop better alliances with county, state, and federal levels that will lead us to finding a solution to the problem.”

A spokesperson from the Miami-Dade Limestone Products Association, Inc. had this to say:

“The Lake Belt Region is Florida’s largest source of aggregate—a critical component for virtually every construction project, from roads and bridges to homes and hospitals. Miami-Dade County’s limestone products industry supports over 10,000 jobs and supplies nearly 50 percent of Florida’s aggregate. Without this supply, housing costs would rise significantly, further exacerbating Florida’s housing affordability challenges.

Decades of independent studies at the local, state, and federal levels confirm that blasting within regulated limits does not harm nearby structures. In fact, a 2018 study commissioned by the Florida Legislature described current limits as “overly restrictive” and concluded: “The current blasting vibration limits in Florida continue to be protective of residential structures.”

Next up is traffic.

Gonzalez discussed specific policy ideas: “That includes synchronization of lights and a new caliber of traffic lights.”

Fernandez added, “Increasing the amount of options that we have to get on and off the highway. There’s an opportunity to I-75 to create on ramps and off ramps.”

Dieguez suggested, “Try to get more highway access at both the easternmost and westernmost ends.”

All three candidates participated in a recent forum. View the video to learn more about them.

The most intimidating and consequential matchup on the Duke football schedule has arrived.

The Duke Blue Devils, fresh off a heartbreaking overtime loss to the SMU Mustangs, hit the road for a Saturday afternoon game against the Miami Hurricanes. Head coach Manny Diaz came within a blocked kick on the final play of regulation from seven wins over his first eight games with the Blue Devils, and now he gets a chance at revenge against the program that fired him three years ago (although Diaz downplayed the idea of any remaining resentment during his Monday press conference).

While Duke’s defense leads the ACC in passing yards allowed, there hasn’t been a challenge like Miami yet because there isn’t a challenge like the Hurricanes to be found. Quarterback Cam Ward, a leading candidate for the Heisman Trophy, has thrown for 343.3 yards per game this season with 24 passing touchdowns, 3 rushing touchdowns, and five interceptions.

Do the Blue Devils have what it takes to slow down the superstar on his home turf? Here’s what our staff thinks.

Ryan Haley, Duke Wire staff editor

There’s clearly a path to getting ahead of schedule against the Hurricanes. Virginia Tech led the Hurricanes by 10 points with nine minutes to play. The California Golden Bears built a 35-10 lead deep into the second half. While Ward and his offense have crawled out of each hole, teams can only play with fire for so long.

However, the Hokies and Golden Bears are averaging 377.0 and 399.6 yards of offense against FBS opponents, respectively. The Blue Devils have only managed 334.0. Wide receiver Jordan Moore looks progressively healthier every week and the passing offense will get a major shot in the arm when he’s at full throttle, but we’re less than two weeks removed from Maalik Murphy throwing for 70 yards on 24 attempts against the Florida State Seminoles.

The Hurricanes, surprisingly, are second in the conference in yards allowed per pass attempt. While the optics of nearly beating SMU in regulation look great, six turnovers in a single game are a staggering and unrepeatable number even against Ward, who can occasionally struggle with ball security. I don’t think 21 points in regulation, even with two missed field goals, fully sold me on the problems being fixed.

Miami 38, Duke 17

Bryant Crews, Staff Writer

Duke fumbled an incredible opportunity last weekend to check even more boxes on an otherwise excellent season. The loss to SMU probably killed any fleeting hopes of making it to the ACC Championship game, and it also cost them a likely addition to the US LBM Coaches Poll.

Duke played outstanding defense (yet again) and forced SMU to make some big mistakes. Couple that with SMU’s blunders, and Duke had six turnovers and didn’t score on any of them. Before we proceed with the rest of this prediction, Jonathan Brewer’s job should be in question come December.

Duke will have to turn the page, prepare to make a trip to Miami, and take on a top-10 Miami team that looks destined for an ACC Championship game behind potential Heisman winner Cam Ward’s arm. He’s been surgical all season long, and he’s far and away the best quarterback Duke will see this year.

The Hurricanes have some terrific skill position talent, and their defense has multiple guys who will be playing on Sunday next year and in the future. It’s the best Miami team in quite some time, and Duke will not have the horses to win. The defense will be enough to give Miami fits for a half, but Duke’s lack of punch offensively will doom them in the second half.

Miami 34, Duke 16

Josiah Caswell, Staff Writer

This weekend, Duke will face the toughest team they’ve faced all year and the toughest they’ll face for the entire season as a whole. Miami has been a force this year, holding one of the best offenses in the nation led by Cam Ward.

The Blue Devils’ secondary and defense as a whole will need to play their best football. Simply put, Chandler Rivers and company will have their hands full.

The thing is, the Canes’ defense isn’t unstoppable. Whether it be through the air or on the ground, Miami’s defense has been susceptible to big plays. If Duke wants to win, they’ll need to avoid the Canes’ strong pass rush and string together big plays. If they can do it, it could be a four-quarter fight. If not? It could get ugly.

Miami 41, Duke 20

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There are pinks and then there are pinks. Millennial pink coloured the 2010s. Schiaparelli pink lit up the 1930s. Miami pink was the neon glow of the 1980s. The seeds of the latter were sown in art deco, but it was plugged in and electrified by Michael Mann, executive producer of Miami Vice, with a soundtrack of Jan Hammer synth and some relaxed, tonal Armani tailoring.

It couldn’t have flowered as extravagantly at any other time. When the first episodes of the show aired in 1984, many of the city’s waterfront hotels and apartment buildings that are now considered cherished masterpieces were beige and decaying. By the time of the last season finale in 1989, those structures formed part of what writer Joan Didion called a “rich and wicked pastel boomtown”. The transformation of the city in that interim period, and what led up to it, is as wild as any of the show’s plotlines. Here was a beach town, ignored for decades, enjoying an absurdity of sudden wealth from the cocaine trade that put the 19th-century gold rush in the shade. Austerity wasn’t an appropriate aesthetic.

We were all involved in the revolt against the beige and white

Numerous architects and product designers contributed to the new look of American architecture, including Michael Graves and Steven Holl, but it was Arquitectonica that ruled. Still a global force today, the practice founded by Laurinda Spear and Bernardo Fort-Brescia in 1977 was put on the map by the Miami house Spear worked on – initially with her then professor, Rem Koolhaas – as a home for her family. The result, with grids of glass blocks, a courtyard pool and squared-off planes in five different shades of the same colour, was the first formally acknowledged Arquitectonica project and became an icon. The property appeared repeatedly in Miami Vice, as well as in pop videos and fashion shoots by Bruce Weber. It was and remains The Pink House.

Alastair Gordon, author of the Rizzoli monograph on Arquitectonica, explains the building’s significance: “The pink soon ingrained itself into the very DNA of the city,” he says, “connoting an urban environment that was both exotic and decadent in its pinkness. The impression was further reinforced in 1983 when artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude created the Surrounded Islands installation for Biscayne Bay. Some of the Christo islands could be seen from the terrace of the Pink House: pink to pink.”

Bernardo Fort-Brescia attributes a lot of the fame of The Pink House, and their other buildings in the city – including the now demolished fire-engine-red Babylon apartment and the Atlantis condo building, with its blue grid façade and yellow-accented void – to the way they were presented in the TV show. “There was no internet,” he says. “It’s one thing to be on the cover of every architectural magazine, but that’s just read by other architects. When our buildings appeared in Miami Vice, it was the announcement of a new Miami to the world. You saw it on television, it connected the dots of the graphic power of the early buildings.”

The buildings of the new Miami were partly successors to deco, but more accurately they were developing some of the neo-baroque ideas explored by Morris Lapidus in the 1950s. Much of this work has been lumped together, erroneously, as postmodern. And it shouldn’t be. “Postmodern meant Robert AM Stern referencing classic architecture, and looking back,” says Fort-Brescia. “We were not doing broken neoclassical columns. It was a difficult time for us – being modernists in a period when postmodernism was so popular. We were actually the outsiders. We were fighting for abstraction.”

If the architecture of the period had more in common with Le Corbusier than Frank Gehry, the interiors were often a mix of Halston louche (steel tables by Maria Pergay are perfect for chopping lines) and the postmodernism against which Fort-Brescia was reacting. But there was no escaping the reality that they co-existed in the same universe. One of the simplest objects you might have found in one of those homes was the Easylight created by Philippe Starck in 1979 – a simple neon floor tube to lean against a wall. Starck would go on to be integral to the look of the new Miami when he refashioned the Delano Hotel in the mid-1990s, filling it with billowing fabrics and white-on-white elements that paid po-mo homage to Versailles. 

Then there was the 1970 Ultrafragola Mirror by Ettore Sottsass, with its wiggly neon frame, that fits perfectly with the Miami Vice aesthetic. The Jellyfish mirror launched by Bryan O’Sullivan recently, with its illuminated ruffle, has the same visual energy. “I’ve long been an admirer of the world of Arquitectonica,” says O’Sullivan’s husband and co-founder of the studio, James O’Neill. “Theirs is an interesting, distilled take on art deco. Designs are often restrained in form with an unexpected playful flourish and fabulous colour accent. We are currently working on an Auberge Hotel in South Beach and have drawn inspiration in our designs from this movement.” 

Deco or postmodern? Both? More? Things get complicated when you consider that Arquitectonica also contributed to the canon of Memphis furniture in Milan by designing the kidney-shaped Madonna table in 1984. It’s still available to order, for €15,430. “I guess we were grouped together with Memphis at the time,” says Fort-Brescia, “because we were all involved in the revolt against the beige and white of the era.” Gordon sums up the era in the introduction to his book: “It was European rationalism cross-fertilised with tropical surrealism.” 

Charlotte von Moos, author of Miami in the 1980s: The Vanishing Architecture of a “Paradise Lost”, points to the diverse influences that melded to forge the new Miami. She cites the muscular modernism of Le Corbusier (although not the 43 low-saturation shades of his swatch book in 1931) and Mexican architects Luis Barragán and Ricardo Legorreta. Both were as bold with their use of brights as Corb was restrained. And the influence of Latin American aesthetics can’t be overstated when it comes to the Miami new wave. Neither can the influence of Michael Mann himself, whose vision for the show and associated filmography was hyper-glossy. 

But there’s a darkness too. Miami is a dark city with a glossy patina. Before Miami Vice, Michael Mann directed the 1983 supernatural horror film The Keep, lit and art-directed in a way that might recall a high-end fragrance commercial. His fascination with interiors and architecture, light and reflection marketed Miami in a whole new way. There would be glass brick to illuminate internal spaces, tropical sunlight to make façades glow. Architecture, as much as cocaine, would define the city.

“Architecture with a capital ‘A’ became the primary ingredient in marketing high-end properties,” says Gordon. “Celebrity designers like Herzog & de Meuron, Sir Norman Foster, Rem Koolhaas (OMA), Renzo Piano, Frank Gehry, Jean Nouvel, David Chipperfield and others parachuted into the city for a hopped-up media frenzy.” And frenzy is right. “I remember being at the opening of Zaha Hadid’s One Thousand Museum tower in 2019,” he recalls. “She was practically crushed to death by the adoring crowd. I was there to witness it. It was totally bizarre. Totally Miami.”